


A Gilded Legacy

by devilinthedetails



Series: Free Spirit [7]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Father and daughter, Gen, Gifts, legacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:28:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25862101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Jon gives Lianne a locket that once belonged to her namesake
Relationships: Lianne II of Conté/Other(s)
Series: Free Spirit [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1864777
Kudos: 6





	A Gilded Legacy

A Gilded Legacy

Lianne was a wallflower gowned in purple-grape satin at the ball celebrating her own betrothal to Prince Rurik of Maren. While she stood in the corner, sipping a glass of white wine imported from Tyra as slowly as possible so her hands would be too occupied for dancing, her narrowed eyes noticed her intended surrounded by a crowd of giggling, perfumed court ladies. She might have been jealous if she cared about maintaining the affection of her future husband at all, but she didn’t. The affection of anyone except Alan seemed a foolish thing to strive for…

“Lianne.” Her father interrupted her musings with a gentle hand on her elbow. She braced herself to be dragged onto the dance floor, preparing herself to force a fake, radiant smile befitting the joyful occasion, because that was what he would’ve wanted her to do, and she might be a woman grown—a woman about to be married to a foreign land—but she still wanted her father’s approval as much as she had when she was a little girl learning to curtsey in the nursery. 

She was surprised when he didn’t attempt to guide her onto the dance floor, but instead reached into the pocket of his blue breeches lined with veins of silver. “I have a present for you, my dear?” 

“A betrothal gift?” Lianne felt her lips quirk into what might have been the twisted beginning of a genuine smile rather than the forced one she’d planned. 

“You might think of it that way.” He slipped a golden locket with its heart shaped outlined in rubies that glittered in the candlelight between her fingers, and she admired how the light sparkled on the red and the gold, reminding her of sunset. “It was a locket belonging to your grandmother Lianne, your namesake.” 

Her grandmother Lianne who had died years before Lianne herself was born—before any of her siblings were born. Her grandmother Lianne whom everyone remembered as sweet but sickly. Her grandmother Lianne whom her father still visited in the cold crypts, returning with a face gray as a grave with grief. 

“Open it,” Papa told Lianne when she only stared at the locket as if she’d forgotten what to do with it. 

Lianne’s fingers fumbled around the exterior of the locket until she found the clasp that slid open the closed heart of the jewelry. She had expected to encounter some resistance or rust—some sign of age or ruin—as she folded back the top of the locket, she found none. 

The inside of the locket was likewise untainted by the passage of time, no dust marring its portrait. Inside the locket, a girl in a dress the color of the first green and gold buds of spring forever smiled. Her cheeks were pretty flushed roses in full bloom. Her long brown hair, braided with ribbons and flowers that matched her gown, rippled about her waist in a style Lianne recognized as having been high fashion among maidens a generation ago. Her brown eyes—the eyes Lianne herself had inherited—were warm and alight with a hidden laughter and a waiting kindness. Gazing into those eyes, Lianne for the first time saw how her own might be thought beautiful. 

“She had it painted before she married my father.” Papa’s gaze was riveted on the locket as well. “I thought I would pass it on to you before you were married because you are her namesake, her living legacy. You might give it to your own daughter one day should you be blessed to have one.” 

Lianne expected to feel a surge of irritation that he was talking about the blessing of her having children when she hadn’t even married Prince Rurik yet, but instead she found herself staring at the locket, seeing it as a gift that kept giving. A present passed from generation to generation. A gilded legacy. 

“Would you help me put it on?” She draped the locket around her neck and then turned so her father could shut the chain. 

“It’d be my pleasure.” His fingers moved along her neck, honoring her request. 

The locket fixed in place, she spun around so he could admire it on her. “How does it look on me?” 

“Shiningly beautiful.” Papa’s eyes twinkled at her like silver stars. 

Lianne smiled at him. Her gaze traveled to the dance floor, where she saw a little girl—too young to be shipped off like baggage to the convent where she would be taught to become a perfect wife and mother—gliding under the arched arm of the man who must have been her father. 

Watching the little girl dance with her father, Lianne remembered with rising moisture in her eyes how she had once twirled around the ballroom with Papa. Back then, she had giggled as the courtiers spiraled about her in a dazzling, dizzying array, because she had believed with rock certainty that he could catch her in a heartbeat if she started to fall. She had felt safe and secure in Papa’s hands. 

With a stab of nostalgia, an aching hunger to recapture for just one fleeting moment the innocence of her youth, she asked, “Will you dance with me, Papa?” 

“Of course.” Papa took her arm in his and escorted her onto the dance floor, where Lianne tried to stretch a fleeting moment into a thousand years so she wouldn’t have to marry at all.


End file.
